Perfect Union, Imperfect Family

This week the New York Times magazine published a long article on Tatiana and Krista Hogan, 4-year-old craniopagus twins, conjoined at the head and sharing a neural bridge that connects the two brains at the thalami. The author takes the girls' compelling story as an occasion to explore notions of selfhood and consciousness. Tatiana and Krista appear to share some sensory information across their neural connection, seemingly able to see and feel through the other's eyes and skin. Whether or not this is the case—and nobody really knows, perhaps not even the girls themselves—there is no doubt that these precious sisters can be understood as a kind of test case for notions of identity, consciousness, and the human condition that have shaped Western society since the Enlightenment.